TRIATHLON: Belvoir’s Chris competes at Brownlee Tri

Several thousand people visited the beautiful Harewood House Estate in Leeds for the Brownlee Brothers’ annual Brownlee Tri on Saturday.

Continuing to build their legacy event, Alistair and Jonny Brownlee’s triathlon saw nearly 1,600 registered participants take on the swim, bike and run course near their home town of Bramhope.

The Brownlee Brothers started the first wave of the day at 9.30am, with participants taking part in various distances – sprint, super sprint and relay races – throughout the day.

Belvoir Tri Club’s Chris Masters was amongst 854 participants on the start line for the sprint distance. His race consisted of a 750m open water swim followed by a 28km undulating bike ride and a 5.5km run.

On completion, Chris said: “I finished 23rd overall and third in my age group. It’s the second time I have competed in this event and is one of my favourite races in the year.

“The highlight was having a discussion with both Brownlee brothers about their recent race in Mexico and why the club was pronounced Beaver and not Belvoir. I’m looking forward to doing it next year already.”

It was a double action weekend for Chris as the following day he competed in his 15th triathlon of the season at East Leake, near Nottingham.

The East Leake Triathlon is one of the most established events in the triathlon season and offers a great fast and flat course. The race was a 400m pool swim, a 22km out and back bike ride and a 5km run on bridleway and paths. In a strong field of 254, Chris finished 22nd overall.

Several ‘Beavers’ were out on their bikes on Sunday’, participating in the Belvoir Blast Sportive. The sportive was organised by Two Wheels and a Piece of Cake and offered a choice of three circular road routes (28, 58 and 100 miles) with the latter route including more than 5,000ft of climbing.

Blake Hutchinson, Ove Andresen and Wayne Searle were amongst more than 10,000 people taking to the streets of Nottingham for the Robin Hood Marathon on Sunday.

Ove completed the full marathon in a time of 4hr 27sec and was 13th in age group out of 39. Blake came in at 4:15:16, 76th in AG out of 138. Wayne ran the half marathon in 1:48:53 for 101st in AG out of 460, beating his 2015 time by almost six minutes.

Blake commented after the race: “I suffered some cramp after 18 miles and it took another couple of miles before I could pick the pace up for a strong finish. I appreciated the great support around the route and especially from other BTC club members.”